The movie is pretty much done! Check out The Promise of New York!
I need to clean up this site - there’s a billion spam comments and a really old version of Wordpress. But who knows when I’ll get around to that.
So if you want to see what’s been going on for the past three years - and its a LOT!! - go visit my main blog Culturebot.org!
Raul is filming me blogging for the movie. It is compelling cinema. Keep coming back for more. We’re talking about what blogs are and how they are changing the world.
Obviously not much activity here blog-wise. The Mayoral election was a blow-out for Bloomberg. I think this project is prett much done for now. So thanks for checking in and we’ll let you know when there’s some new adventures.
Even though the NY TIMES and other news outlet seem to think Harriet Miers is a cautious choice for Supreme Court, I can’t help but disagree. In many pictures, including those from the announcement of her nomination, she wears a conspicuously obvious crucifix. Among the credits Bush listed were “the young women’s christian association” and “exodus ministries”. He specifically spelled out “christian” rather than say YWCA. He took a long pause after saying the word “grace” - a woman of grace…..character, etc. He talked about “knowing her heart”. I may sound paranoid, but I think that a lot of what Bush was saying was barely-coded subtext that she, like himself, is a conservative, fundamentalist christian. And though Roberts, who was just nominated, is a Catholic, he too has a heavy strain of religiosity.
Bush is essentially trying to stack the court with incredibly conservative, backwards-looking, religious fundamentalists who will choose dogma over innovation, people who are “strict constructionists” looking at the letter of the law rather than its intent.
its not enough that he will destroy america for 8 years in a row. bush is planting the seeds for the long term erosion of the dream of an enlightened america.
A few weeks back the New Yorker ran an article on Anthony Kennedy talking about how his passion for foreign law could change the Supreme Court. It seems less and less likely. In the article was a very revealing paragraph that intimated a frightening and strong strain of conservative closed-mindedness and isolationism:
This spring, fifty-four conservatives in the House of Representatives sponsored a resolution criticizing the use of foreign sources by the Supreme Court, and, in August, Representative Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, completed an investigation of the Justices’ foreign trips, based on the disclosure forms that they are required to file. “Between 1998 and 2003, the Justices took a total of ninety-three foreign trips,” King told me. “And the implication is that there are at least a couple of Justices, chiefly Kennedy and Breyer, who are more enamored of the ‘enlightenment’ of the world than they are bound by our own Constitution.”
Yeah, that enlightenment was such a drag. What with inventing the whole idea of individual liberty and stuff.
with Andrew Rasiej coming in at 5% in the public advocate’s race i think its pretty obvious - as it was from very early in my own race - that bloggers are not to be relied upon as a political force or to deliver votes at the polls.
bloggers are just people with very little in common besides a need to write on the internet, overinflated senses of their own importance and, often, a love of drinking to excess.
that being said i think that the technological issues raised by rasiej and my campaigns, and the potential that blogging & new media hold for the future of politics, are importnat. I think information technology and new systems and models for communication will continue to be a factor in culture and government, both in how we interact with government and how government conducts business.
still, the future is the future. Today it is business as usual and very little is likely to change. Ferrer is an ineffectual bumbler and Bloomberg, spin or not, is still in the pockets of the big corporate real estate developers. Just witnes the debacle that is the Bronx Terminal Market redevelopment plan. There’s an article in the NY Daily News about it that says:
Alex Savinon, who runs a small restaurant supply company at the Bronx Terminal Market, is baffled and fed up. So fed up he went on rent strike yesterday.
More than a year ago, Savinon and two dozen other wholesalers at the Bronx market met with city officials about a new $400 million big-box commercial venture the Bloomberg administration has slated for the very site their businesses now occupy.
Stephen Ross, the head of The Related Companies, had just purchased the 33-acre Bronx market site and landed a sole source development deal from the city for the project he has dubbed Gateway Center.
Ross is not only one of New York’s biggest developers, he is also a former business partner of Mayor Bloomberg’s economic development czar, Dan Doctoroff.
Later on the article states that Ross collects $280,000 a month from the tenants while paying only $22,000 to the city.
Nice.
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez plans to “cut out the middle man” and sell cheap oil directly to America’s poor!!
Read about it in the NY Daily News.
amazing.
We here at BlogParty.org/Andy For Mayor hope that if you are a New Yorker, you voted in today’s democratic primary. yeah, the choices were lame, but you’ve gotta vote anyway. use it or lose it.
as you know the “andy for mayor” project has concluded, but we will be back in the future with new politically oriented projects.
happy election!
Well, I guess its pretty obvious at this point that I will not be continuing to run for mayor. I will make an official announcement on September 27th at the next installment of the WYSIWYG Talent Show.
It was a great time and a great experience. I learned a lot about NYC, about politics and about the issues that affect my city. I’m not sure what is next but I will keep the blog up while I figure it out.
Although the Andy For Mayor project is over, the blog party will be back, hopefully, with other fun and interesting projects exploring the intersection of art and politics.
Rock On.
I will be returning to the States in the next few days, and after nearly two weeks of consultations in the U.K. I will be making some important campaign announcements upon my return.
In addition, Miriam from Berlin, if you read this, e-mail me. I forgot to get your e-mail address.
As it becomes abundantly clear that I will not be able to gather the requisite signatures to run as an independent candidate, I will have to take some time to consider how to proceed. I will traveling to the U.K. to reconsider my options. Posting (and campaigning) will be light from August 18-29.